No Summer

Grape growers always worry. They worry about mold. They worry about pests. They worry about sunshine. They worry most of all about the prospect of rain. But for real anxiety, few vintages have rivaled the 1991 harvest in California’s north coast.

This was an unusual growing season for Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino and Lake counties. The vines flowered later than usual, meaning grapes began to form late. And then something odd happened: Summer never came. Most of the area did not get the normal heat of summer, and the grapes simply puttered along.

Sparkling wine grapes are always the earliest grapes harvested; most years, the harvest begins by Aug. 1. This year ripening was so slow that by mid-August nothing could be picked.

It was early September before the picking for sparkling wine grapes began.

By Sept. 10, there was near panic in the vineyards. Even the best winemakers have no remedy for rain--and in the last three of four years rain had hit the north coast vineyards on Sept. 15. Forecasters said this year it would be clear through the month of September, but winemakers stayed up late nights drinking gallons of coffee, anticipating the worst.

And then . . . nothing happened. No rain. No heat. The harvest continued to poke along.

It was October before Dick Grace of Grace Family Vineyard in St. Helena issued his annual invitation to help harvest grapes. On the morning of Oct. 5, 110 of us gathered at 8 a.m. for coffee and sweet rolls and Dick’s ambling introduction. Grace described which grapes to pick and which to ignore. He then passed out the curved picking knives--serpettes--and we attacked the upper Grace vineyard.

We filled 30-pound lug boxes and hauled them down the hill to the man at the weigh station--which was nothing more than a tiny scale sitting on an upended wine barrel. Some of us pushed the huge cart filled with stems from the crusher to the discard bin.

Heat never became a problem, but as we began to pick the lower vineyard--which meant carrying the 30-pound boxes up hill to the crushing station--the number of pickers decreased.

By 1 p.m. the grapes were all in. As we sat down to a picnic lunch Grace said, “We could have made more wine this year, because the tonnage on the vine was tremendous. Everybody had a huge crop.” But large crops can yield mediocre wines, so in mid-season, Grace went out and cut about 30% of his fruit off the vine, to concentrate the flavors in the remaining berries.

In his 2-acre vineyard Grace produces what might be California’s best Cabernet Sauvignon. It is certainly the state’s most hard-to-get wine. Grace produces only 250 cases of wine a year, sells his wine for $62.50 a bottle and sells only to those on his mailing list. He limits sales to four bottles per person.

But he was not the only one to thin his crop. Growers say that the crop was so large throughout California that even the E & J Gallo Winery, which buys a huge amount of grapes, demanded that the vines be thinned at mid-season to avoid thin, lackluster flavors.

But the huge crop has had another effect. Because of it, there’s a large surplus of wine building up throughout the state. And that creates financial problems.

Consider the case of Sonoma’s Grand Cru winery. In early October, Bank of America re-evaluated the winery’s asset base and declined to extend its $1.4 million credit line. The winery filed for Chapter 11 protection of the Bankruptcy Court (reorganization).

A winery spokesman said the bank normally values winery assets based on case prices of wine at FOB prices. This year, the bank changed that policy and said the winery’s assets would be based in part on how much the same wine could command in the bulk wine market.

Thus instead of a case of wine selling for $40 to a wholesale house, the bank said that same case was worth only $14 or $15, the price it would fetch in the bulk market.

Grand Cru said it is continuing operations as usual while the court works out details of the bankruptcy. Said one industry analyst: “The banks are playing hardball. This won’t be the last bankruptcy up there.”

Meanwhile, this could be a superb year for wine quality. Ripening may have been slow, but grapes gain wonderful flavor when they spend a long time on the vine.

Wine of the Week

1990 Bouchaine Dry Gewurztraminer ($7.50)-- This handsome wine by a southern Napa Valley winery has the stamp of both Sonoma County and Mendocino County on it. The fruit comes from a Russian River vineyard long owned by Louis Martini (who owns more vineyards in Sonoma than Napa). The winemaker was John Montero, who previously was the winemaker for Navarro in Anderson Valley. The aroma of the wine is pure spice, with hints of lychee nuts and carnations. The taste is intensely scented too, with just a trace of residual sugar. The wine matches well with Oriental foods and is attractive to sip on a warm day.